Military Thought in Early China by Christopher C. Rand

Author:Christopher C. Rand
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2017-08-12T16:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

This chapter has explored a wide swath of primary sources on the moral dimension of war in the Zhanguo period, illustrating not only a lively debate among civil and military theorists alike, but the importance of the wen/wu question in a fractious time. What is critical to remember from this exploration is that none of the solutions forwarded in this debate had the upper hand in the Warring States era. All three of the core solutions had their defenders, and any of them could have become dominant in later times depending on the success of individual leaders and their advisors in bringing interstate strife to an end and establishing renewed stability throughout the old Zhou realm.

When the Qin regime failed to sustain its unified state past a few years and Liu Bang was successful in reasserting a unity in the Sinitic world that it had not seen since the beginning of Western Zhou, the stage was set for a new turn in the longstanding wen/wu debate that would lead to new relationships among the three central solutions. We therefore shift in the next chapter to a consideration of the evolution of the wen/wu controversy during the Western Han dynasty.

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